Flares are a safety device. You will see flaring during startup/shutdown conditions of units, yes there are uncontrollable amounts of valves left open venting gasses to the flare, but loss defeats safety in most cases, in the event of a safety critical situation processes expend pressures to the flare. (Believe me. Valves and pipes are clusterfuck maze only engineers understand with drawings) Better and safer to burn off unsafe gasses at high altitudes than collecting them, and having a fuel/air bomb waiting to go at any time. If you’re not in the O/G industry, just know there’s concern if flares are blowing REALLY hard and the smoke isn’t stifled with enough steam.
most flare systems cater to these three scenarios: 0:21 non-flaring continuous standby pilot burns off 450t hydrocarbon gases/year 0:50 a normal situation more than 90% of the time the flare is burning released hydrocarbon gases from process upsetting conditions. 1:20 an abnormal situation isn't odd to see this occur at every refinery and petrochemical plant. 1:50 a flare system will burn away 60-80 thousand tons of hydrocarbon gases/year for typical refinery with a 10 million tons/yr production capacity. the side effects of flaring: 2:05 air pollution as smelly sulfur compounds released during a flare cause public objections/concern. 2:45 solution: flare gas recovery system FRS. 3:23 the burning standby pilots burn away 450t hydrocarbon gases/year. 3:40 incomplete combustion of acid flare gasses can cause hydrogen sulfide air pollution. 4:00 the shanghai FRS solution can solve all flare and flare-gas problems. this is how FRS works: 4:15 feature #1, the pilot will be in OFF mode. ... 4:52 feature #4 complete combustion of acid gases using heat value control tech guarantees 98% conversion/combustion to reduce smelly toxic gas pollution. 6:10 qingye's flare-gas recovery system can insure maximum flare safety. 8:00- acid gases not only contain hydrogen sulfide, but also ammonia. the normal flaring method to decompose them is to mix them with gasses and burn, but hydrogen sulfide will not be completely combusted. this is what causes smelly air pollution [and acid dust dew currently found on the cars 25+ miles away from a flaring event as my video evidence indicates]. 8:25 heat value of acid gases is key factor affecting hydrogen sulfide combustion. 11:25 summary FRS benefits.
